Fields as categories

[sooskriszta]

Guys,

I am trying to achieve something that may seem strange.

I'd like to create a link database of bodypainters. The structure I like is the following:
1- Skill
2- Country
3- Region
4- City/Town

In other words, something like this:
- Bodypainter
-- UK
--- Scotland
----- Edinburgh
- Beautician
-- USA
--- Florida
---- Miami
---- Orlando
-- UK
--- England
---- London

I want to be able to define the top level category (skill) myself manually.

But the subcategories (country, region, city), I want to be created based on the information entered by the users during registration.

On the homepage, I want the catalog to appear somewhat like in the attachment.

In the registration page, I want to allow users to select which categories (unlimited) they want to be listed under - instead of having to register again and again, they just use checkboxes to mark the categories.

Is this possible? Someone please help!

[ezykiwi]

Would take abit of a mod/block im guessing but since people can already suggest categories surely it could be worked in through that code...

Good thought though.... id be keen to see something like this also ....

[dody]

It would be easier, if Skill is the categories

Then Country, Region and City/Town are set as link's custom field.
In many case you may want something like this:
- people visit the category page,
- in left side of category page, there is something like 'filter' which the custom field will act as the criteria. It may not an input box, but a text link, like 'Region: Asia' then it will show only for asia.

If you want to do this, use power_search.php for the filter. It need to be transformed into text link instead of input box.

You will want a custom script for this, but it would a lot of easier rather than using category structure you suggested above, I think.

[sooskriszta]

Dody,

Thanks for the response, but I'm not sure that I understand.

Let's say I have skills as the top level categories. Let's say I have 4 skills: Bodypainters, Beauticians, Nail Artists and Models.

That is the easy part.

Now as subcategories for each of these, I want Countries as sub-categories, Region/State as sub-sub-categories, and Cities as sub-sub-sub categories.

To start off with I can create Country as a custom field for the links.

But I am struggling to understand 2 things:

1. I can also create region/state as a custom field for links. But how do I connect region/state to country, so that only regions/states within the country selected are shown.

2. If we resolve the above (#1) problem, then how can I allow multiple cities, regions/states, or even countries for each link.

This is the backend side of things. Now coming back to the "shopfront", I didn't quite understand what you suggested with the filters. All I want is that just like any normal classifieds site, on the homepage, categories, subcategories, subsubcategories etc are listed in the proper structure (please check the attachment in my original message...I've missed region/state there, but you'll understand what I mean).

I don't want the user to have to run searches etc. I want it to be extremely easy for the user, and I want each of these pages to be indexed by Google.

Please help!